That hard limit is going to have to be bumped up if/when Bitcoin takes off. 463 transactions per minute wouldn't be anywhere near viable for a worldwide online currency. We, at least, need to be able to handle the number of average transactions per minute that paypal claims they currently average.
+1
Scaling to high
transaction rate has always been my main concern about viability of bitcoin. I'm much more concerned about scalability than government shutdown, for example.